Black Screen with Nothing, no sound, But LED lights come on & drive spins up, F keys do NOT work?

[hpuser411]

Please help,

I have a HP Pavilion DV2214US (HP Pavilion Entertainment PC ) (actually a laptop), (dual core) where all i get is a Black Screen with Nothing, no video at all, and NO sound, yet the LED lights come on and drive spins up...

the F keys do NOT do anything when i push them at power on (F1, F10, F12, etc)

Now, with the dvd/cd rom drive draw out, i can here the hard drive spin up, but then after maybe 30 seconds it shuts off and spins down while the laptop still has a BLACK screen, nothing, natta.

I plugged in an external monitor and speakers, and nothing at all, just laptop lights turn on.

For the record, this black screen has been happening on and off for a few months, some days it boots fine and other days black screen, nothing, or random error message about staring windows normally.  here i thought the hard drive was going bad, now it does NOT boot at all, totally down, black screen with no sound, just lights come on.

Is this a System board or bad BIOS????  i am new to laptop repairs..

It will NOT boot any support CD, like ERD commander or partition commander or nothing, just black screen....

For the record, i am a past PC technician and now a server admin, so i am a power user, but new to laptop hardware..

I beg for your help, is this a system board and i a see some system boards for this online for $50 to $99 bucks, so not bad i guess for a good laptop for my college child, so i don't mind spending that little money instead of $500 for another laptop... this laptop i believe is a dual core, so no sense throwing it away!!!  i want to fix it !!

(windows Vista, dual core, nvidia video = runs great for my college kid and i want to fix this, not trash it )

Also, how the heck to i get this laptop apart, so far i found some HP docs on this HP Pavilion DV2214US laptop, but it does not fully say how to snap stuff apart and not break anything???

Thanks in advance!!

[hpuser411]

For the record, i tried the posted troubleshooting steps below, and according to their steps, they suggest it MIGHT be the system board.... Soooo allow me to ask you all, is this your experience, a system board???

IF so, any specific parts house you recommend??

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So if you have a notebook that starts up with just a black screen:

Which there are several ways to figure out if it's the Hard Drive or not but:

Step:

1. Turn the notebook off
2. Then turn it back on and start tapping F10 to get into the BIOS.
3. From here you want to test the Hard Drive. ( How to test the Hard Drive )
4. If you get an error message then you know it's the Hard Drive.

If the Bios doesn't come up and the screen is still black

Step:

1. Remove the Hard Drive.( How to remove a Laptop Hard Drive )
2. Boot the notebook up and start tapping F10 to get into the Bios. 
3. If you can get into the BIOS like this the issue is your Hard Drive. 

If doing any of these steps doesn't resolve the issue or give you any clue it's the Hard Drive. More than likely the mother Board is giving you the issue. I would suggest getting the notebook serviced or looked at.

[AttackofZaq]

Hello hpuser411.

While it is hard to pinpoint these sorts of issues due to not having power to the notebook I can provide a little useful information.  Normally when an HP notebook experiences a problem similar to BIOS corruption it throws a specific error code.  In the case of HP notebooks it has either the CAPS LOCK or NUM LOCK keys blink in a pattern.  For a corrupted BIOS the pattern is two blinks.  Since the notebook is unresponsive and not throwing the BIOS code the next likely culprit would be the motherboard.

You may still be able to purchase the motherboard directly from HP Part Surfer.  Here is a link to your notebook's page.

Also, here is the Maintenance and Service Guide for your notebook.  It will help with the disassembly of the notebook.  

Have a great day!